One of the difficulties in studying ancient Greek religion is the anxiety in how personal religious beliefs and public practices interact. The issue had been effectively side-lined by the near-ubiquity of Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood’s polis-religion[1] model. By effectually ignoring the role of the individual in religious practice, the tension between the person and the state was no longer an issue. More recently scholars have begun restating the importance of the individual.[2] However, there is still tension, where work tends to either present a view of polis-religion with an acknowledgement of personal belief[3] or presents a critique of polis-religion in the context of individual belief.[4]Neither of these approaches captures the complexity of the interrelationship between civic practice and personal belief. A full picture of the religious landscape of Greece in the sixth to fourth centuries BCE requires a wholistic examination of religion, encompassing both the civic and the individual. BBB will do this by examining civic and personal practices without starting from the polis-religion model, and therefore will present an entirely new methodological framework with which scholars can study ancient religion. This framework will be grounded in the methodology of Religious Materialism (RM). Our understanding of the world is shaped by our understanding of material things and using material culture as the foundation for studying the world can enable us to reconstruct ‘history from below’ – that is, the history of the everyday. Using and adapting RM enables me to conduct material based ethnographic-style studies. In the absence of direct ethnographic studies, RM allows us to investigate religion as it was experienced through the physical and literary remains of the culture. RM looks at religion as it is ‘lived’ by people. This approach can help reconstruct ancient peoples’ lives by examining the way they experienced and interacted the world. These experiences and interactions are delineated and enhanced by the objects, spaces, and traditions they encounter in their ‘everyday world’, as well as the sensations and feelings of everyday life, focused through the lens of religious practice. In this way, material culture both embodies and is embedded within religious practices. This occurs through participation in the groups and institutions that make up the civic, social, and private spheres of the city. These groups share some, but not all, of their symbolic grammar and vocabulary, giving a person the ability to transfer concepts from one group into another without significant dissonance. This approach has not been used in the study of ancient religion but has gained significant traction in contemporary religious studies and other historical disciplines. This project will, therefore, inform and be informed by the broad range of research from other disciplines that utilise RM as a methodological approach, particularly as it applies to religion. Using the principles of RM, I have devised a theory of haptic belief[5] to describe the way the body becomes an object in the course of (some) religious practice as a way of defining the embodied nature of the physical activity of religious practice in a system that is predominantly driven by tradition. Additionally, this gives us a way of ‘reading’ belief into religious activity and objects.
Even at the largest civic, politically motivated festivals, some people would have felt deeply devotional, and the multitude of ideas and experiences expressed during these festivals likely ranged from deep piety to uninterested boredom. This must be true because the way that religion is learned is not only by formal education, but within the interpersonal relationships – relationships filled with emotion and sensation.[6] My recent research into the young girls who serve Athena ‘Of the City’ has demonstrated this.[7] BBB will trace personal experiences of civic religion, significantly improving our understanding of both ‘civic’ and ‘personal’ religion, breaking down the artificial boundary between these two ‘categories’ of ancient Greek religion. In this project I will look for the experiences of, for example, the young girls who wove the dress to be offered to Athena; the young man, training for victory at the games in honour of Zeus Olympias; and the politician who travels to Delphi as a sacred envoy to seek the god’s wisdom. Each of these people participates in an act of civic religion, but the things and words they leave behind reveal something about their personal beliefs, ideas, and feelings about the gods and their religion. Only by tracing the material remains of these beliefs can we truly understand the religious lives of individuals and come closer to understanding what life was like for everyday Greeks in the ancient world. To build this new picture of early Greek religion, I will look at a full range of ancient evidence, including predominantly iconographic, epigraphical, and archaeological material evidence. This vast body of evidence is primarily left by individuals and has been side-lined by the reliance on textual evidence in polis-religion. Using this, I will undertake a reconstruction and restaging of events and practises, and collaborating with scholars, archaeologists, artists, theatre practitioners, and religious personnel in order to compile a wide ranging and complete dataset. Some aspects of the project will focus on Athens (accepting it as an atypical example) due to a lack of evidence elsewhere, but where possible evidence from across the Greek mainland will be employed. Some of the main questions for consideration in each part of the project are:
BELIEVING: This section will involve the examine individual experience in large-scale civic festivals, and what role personal experience might play in the meanings associated with civic festivals. For example, the religious, emotive, and sensorial experiences of the young girls who live on the Acropolis for a year, in service to Athena Polias (‘of the city’). This includes looking at iconographic representations, including the Parthenon frieze and vase paintings, archaeological material from the Acropolis, literary and epigraphical texts and dedications discussing the roles and responsibilities of these girls. It will map the kinds of experiances worshipers may have had onto a cognitive, emotive, and material landscape of public religious practice (including comparative studies where appropriate).
Research Questions: What is belief generally and how should we discuss belief in the context of ancient Greek religion? How can we use this working definition within a Materialist methodological framework? Is there a difference between ‘personal’ and ‘civic’ belief or can belief include aspects of both practice? Does civic practice impact personal belief (for instance, what personal religious experiences can be found through participating in large-scale public festivals that are mostly political in nature?)?
BEHAVING: This section will examine the ways that personal religion can be distinguished from public practices, and what happens when those lines are blurred. For instance, what is the difference between dedications left in public sanctuaries (which are publicly visible, in the background of civic religious practices) and offerings which are ‘hidden’, like a curse-tablet buried in a grave. I will also examine the role played by audience(s) in the function of personal dedications in the wider religious landscape. This will involve looking at religious dedications, curse-tablets, evidence for and descriptions of private shrines and practices.
Research Questions: How do individual people’s religious and non-religious behaviour impact on the way that religion is practiced in the poleis (city-states) of ancient Greece? This includes political, civic, military, economic, family-based, ‘showing off’ (e.g. leaving ornate personal dedications in public view, or elaborate funerary processions), and behaviour that we might consider more properly as ‘purely religious’ (e.g. private practices within the home).
BELONGING: This section will investigate how religious participation promoted inclusion into civic spaces. This will primarily involve large-scale archaeological and architectural material, and literary and epigraphical texts. For example, one of my case studies will concern a Thracian, living in Eleusis in the mid-fourth century, who was rewarded for his commitment to local gods and festivals with financial and social privileges. These privileges were inscribed on a stele erected by the state, in the area’s main sanctuary. This shows intentional religious behaviour leading to direct social and fiscal gain, and community inclusion, bearing out my argument that Greek religion operated between civic and personal components.
Research Questions: How much of civic religion is based on the idea of belonging to the community rather than a structure of religious beliefs? What kinds of communities’ impact religious belief and behaviour? The focus will be specifically on political, military, and family communities, as well as public and private religious communities (including ‘public’ cults with voluntary membership, such as the Mysteries of Eleusis).
This project will provide a new model for the study of ancient Greek religion that accounts for the multidirectionality of the public-private nexus in ancient religion. The works produced will enhance our understanding of both ancient Greek religion and the ancient Greek world more generally. Finally, this research will provide further exemplars on the use of RM as a valid methodology for the ethnographic study of religion where no contemporary ethnographic data can be collected.
[1] Sourvinou-Inwood 2000a, 2000b
[2] For example: Eidinow 2016; Graf 2013; Kindt 2015; Rüpke 2013. For method-based work reflecting this anxiety see Kindt 2015: 47; Rask 2016: 16
[3] For example: Kindt 2015.
[4] For example: Bremmer 2010; Kindt 2009
[5] Mackin Roberts 2019
[6] Lynch 2010
[7] Mackin Roberts 2019
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bremmer, Jan N (2010), 'Manteis, Magic, Mysteries and Mythography: Mess Margins of Polis Religion', Kernos, 23 (13-35).
Eidinow, Esther (2016), Envy, Poison, and Death: Women on Trial in Classical Athens (Oxford: Oxford University Press) 421.
Engelke, Matthew (2011), 'Material religion', in Robert A. Orsi (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 209-29.
Graf, Fritz (2013), 'Individual and Common Cult: Epigraphic Reflections', in Jörg Rüpke (ed.), The Individual in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 115-35.
Kindt, Julia (2009), 'Polis Religion – A Critical Appreciation', Kernos, (22), 9-34.
--- (2015), 'Personal Religion: A Productive Category for the Study of Ancient Greek Religion?', The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 135, 35-50.
Knott, Kim, Krech, Volkhard, and Meyer, Birgit (2016), 'Iconic Religion in Urban Space', Material Religion, 12 (2), 123-36.
Lynch, Gordon (2010), 'Object Theory: Toward an intersubjective, mediated, and dynamic theory of religion', in David Morgan (ed.), Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (London: Routledge), 40-54.
Mackin Roberts, Ellie (2019), 'Weaving for Athena: The Arrhephoroi, Panathenaia, and Mundane Acts as Religious Devotion', Journal for Hellenic Religion, 12, 61-84.
McGuire, Meredith B. (2008), Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Morgan, David (2010), 'Introduction: The Matter of Belief', in David Morgan (ed.), Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (London: Routledge), 1-17.
Raja, Rubina and Rüpke, Jörg (2015), 'Archaeology of Religion, Material Religion, and the Ancient World', in Rubina Raja and Jörg Rüpke (eds.), A Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient World (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell), 1-26.
Rask, Katherine Ann (2016), 'Devotionalism, Material Culture, and the Personal in Greek Religion', Kernos, 29, 9-40.
Rüpke, Jörg (2011), 'Lived Ancient Religion: Questioning "Cults" and "Polis Religion"', Mythos, 5, 191-203.
--- (2013), 'Individualization and Individuation as Concepts for Historical Research', in Jörg Rüpke (ed.), The individual in the religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 3-38.
Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane (2000a), 'What is Polis Religion?', in Richard Buxton (ed.), Oxford Readings in Greek Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1-37.
--- (2000b), 'Further Aspects of Polis Religion', in Richard Buxton (ed.), Oxford Readings in Greek Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 38-55.
Vásquez, Manuel A. (2011), More than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Even at the largest civic, politically motivated festivals, some people would have felt deeply devotional, and the multitude of ideas and experiences expressed during these festivals likely ranged from deep piety to uninterested boredom. This must be true because the way that religion is learned is not only by formal education, but within the interpersonal relationships – relationships filled with emotion and sensation.[6] My recent research into the young girls who serve Athena ‘Of the City’ has demonstrated this.[7] BBB will trace personal experiences of civic religion, significantly improving our understanding of both ‘civic’ and ‘personal’ religion, breaking down the artificial boundary between these two ‘categories’ of ancient Greek religion. In this project I will look for the experiences of, for example, the young girls who wove the dress to be offered to Athena; the young man, training for victory at the games in honour of Zeus Olympias; and the politician who travels to Delphi as a sacred envoy to seek the god’s wisdom. Each of these people participates in an act of civic religion, but the things and words they leave behind reveal something about their personal beliefs, ideas, and feelings about the gods and their religion. Only by tracing the material remains of these beliefs can we truly understand the religious lives of individuals and come closer to understanding what life was like for everyday Greeks in the ancient world. To build this new picture of early Greek religion, I will look at a full range of ancient evidence, including predominantly iconographic, epigraphical, and archaeological material evidence. This vast body of evidence is primarily left by individuals and has been side-lined by the reliance on textual evidence in polis-religion. Using this, I will undertake a reconstruction and restaging of events and practises, and collaborating with scholars, archaeologists, artists, theatre practitioners, and religious personnel in order to compile a wide ranging and complete dataset. Some aspects of the project will focus on Athens (accepting it as an atypical example) due to a lack of evidence elsewhere, but where possible evidence from across the Greek mainland will be employed. Some of the main questions for consideration in each part of the project are:
BELIEVING: This section will involve the examine individual experience in large-scale civic festivals, and what role personal experience might play in the meanings associated with civic festivals. For example, the religious, emotive, and sensorial experiences of the young girls who live on the Acropolis for a year, in service to Athena Polias (‘of the city’). This includes looking at iconographic representations, including the Parthenon frieze and vase paintings, archaeological material from the Acropolis, literary and epigraphical texts and dedications discussing the roles and responsibilities of these girls. It will map the kinds of experiances worshipers may have had onto a cognitive, emotive, and material landscape of public religious practice (including comparative studies where appropriate).
Research Questions: What is belief generally and how should we discuss belief in the context of ancient Greek religion? How can we use this working definition within a Materialist methodological framework? Is there a difference between ‘personal’ and ‘civic’ belief or can belief include aspects of both practice? Does civic practice impact personal belief (for instance, what personal religious experiences can be found through participating in large-scale public festivals that are mostly political in nature?)?
BEHAVING: This section will examine the ways that personal religion can be distinguished from public practices, and what happens when those lines are blurred. For instance, what is the difference between dedications left in public sanctuaries (which are publicly visible, in the background of civic religious practices) and offerings which are ‘hidden’, like a curse-tablet buried in a grave. I will also examine the role played by audience(s) in the function of personal dedications in the wider religious landscape. This will involve looking at religious dedications, curse-tablets, evidence for and descriptions of private shrines and practices.
Research Questions: How do individual people’s religious and non-religious behaviour impact on the way that religion is practiced in the poleis (city-states) of ancient Greece? This includes political, civic, military, economic, family-based, ‘showing off’ (e.g. leaving ornate personal dedications in public view, or elaborate funerary processions), and behaviour that we might consider more properly as ‘purely religious’ (e.g. private practices within the home).
BELONGING: This section will investigate how religious participation promoted inclusion into civic spaces. This will primarily involve large-scale archaeological and architectural material, and literary and epigraphical texts. For example, one of my case studies will concern a Thracian, living in Eleusis in the mid-fourth century, who was rewarded for his commitment to local gods and festivals with financial and social privileges. These privileges were inscribed on a stele erected by the state, in the area’s main sanctuary. This shows intentional religious behaviour leading to direct social and fiscal gain, and community inclusion, bearing out my argument that Greek religion operated between civic and personal components.
Research Questions: How much of civic religion is based on the idea of belonging to the community rather than a structure of religious beliefs? What kinds of communities’ impact religious belief and behaviour? The focus will be specifically on political, military, and family communities, as well as public and private religious communities (including ‘public’ cults with voluntary membership, such as the Mysteries of Eleusis).
This project will provide a new model for the study of ancient Greek religion that accounts for the multidirectionality of the public-private nexus in ancient religion. The works produced will enhance our understanding of both ancient Greek religion and the ancient Greek world more generally. Finally, this research will provide further exemplars on the use of RM as a valid methodology for the ethnographic study of religion where no contemporary ethnographic data can be collected.
[1] Sourvinou-Inwood 2000a, 2000b
[2] For example: Eidinow 2016; Graf 2013; Kindt 2015; Rüpke 2013. For method-based work reflecting this anxiety see Kindt 2015: 47; Rask 2016: 16
[3] For example: Kindt 2015.
[4] For example: Bremmer 2010; Kindt 2009
[5] Mackin Roberts 2019
[6] Lynch 2010
[7] Mackin Roberts 2019
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bremmer, Jan N (2010), 'Manteis, Magic, Mysteries and Mythography: Mess Margins of Polis Religion', Kernos, 23 (13-35).
Eidinow, Esther (2016), Envy, Poison, and Death: Women on Trial in Classical Athens (Oxford: Oxford University Press) 421.
Engelke, Matthew (2011), 'Material religion', in Robert A. Orsi (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 209-29.
Graf, Fritz (2013), 'Individual and Common Cult: Epigraphic Reflections', in Jörg Rüpke (ed.), The Individual in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 115-35.
Kindt, Julia (2009), 'Polis Religion – A Critical Appreciation', Kernos, (22), 9-34.
--- (2015), 'Personal Religion: A Productive Category for the Study of Ancient Greek Religion?', The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 135, 35-50.
Knott, Kim, Krech, Volkhard, and Meyer, Birgit (2016), 'Iconic Religion in Urban Space', Material Religion, 12 (2), 123-36.
Lynch, Gordon (2010), 'Object Theory: Toward an intersubjective, mediated, and dynamic theory of religion', in David Morgan (ed.), Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (London: Routledge), 40-54.
Mackin Roberts, Ellie (2019), 'Weaving for Athena: The Arrhephoroi, Panathenaia, and Mundane Acts as Religious Devotion', Journal for Hellenic Religion, 12, 61-84.
McGuire, Meredith B. (2008), Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Morgan, David (2010), 'Introduction: The Matter of Belief', in David Morgan (ed.), Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (London: Routledge), 1-17.
Raja, Rubina and Rüpke, Jörg (2015), 'Archaeology of Religion, Material Religion, and the Ancient World', in Rubina Raja and Jörg Rüpke (eds.), A Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient World (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell), 1-26.
Rask, Katherine Ann (2016), 'Devotionalism, Material Culture, and the Personal in Greek Religion', Kernos, 29, 9-40.
Rüpke, Jörg (2011), 'Lived Ancient Religion: Questioning "Cults" and "Polis Religion"', Mythos, 5, 191-203.
--- (2013), 'Individualization and Individuation as Concepts for Historical Research', in Jörg Rüpke (ed.), The individual in the religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 3-38.
Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane (2000a), 'What is Polis Religion?', in Richard Buxton (ed.), Oxford Readings in Greek Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1-37.
--- (2000b), 'Further Aspects of Polis Religion', in Richard Buxton (ed.), Oxford Readings in Greek Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 38-55.
Vásquez, Manuel A. (2011), More than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press).